SAJAforum: JITN: Tunku Varadarajan Promoted to WSJ Assistant Managing Editor

JITN: Tunku Varadarajan Promoted to WSJ Assistant Managing Editor

[ JITN = Journalists In The News ]

Tunku_1 Tunku Varadarajan, editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal, is moving from the editorial page to the news pages. In mid-February, he will become an assistant managing editor, concentrating on features.
Paul Steiger, the paper's editor and 2004 SAJA Journalism Leader Award winner, said in a note to the staff: "Having the fresh eye of someone with Tunku’s record of success – most recently in broadening out and invigorating the edit page’s op-ed features – will help us keep ahead of the competition at a time when other publications, both new and old, are seeking to steal our approach." [see full memo below]

See Tunku's full bio, archive of WSJ writings and photos from his first SAJA appearance, way back in June 1997.

To send a note to Tunku, post it in the comments section below, or e-mail saja[at]columbia.edu.

Tunku, who was born in New Delhi, India, joins a handful of South Asians in the top management of U.S. dailies: Peter Bhatia, executive editor, The Oregonian; Pankaj Paul, managing editor, Wilmington News Journal; Ketan Gandhi, president and publisher of the Home News Tribune in New Jersey (first South Asian publisher of a U.S. daily).

The Paul Steiger memo is below.

[Memo from Paul Steiger, WSJ editor - Jan. 11, 2007]

To the staff,

I’m pleased to announce the appointment of Tunku Varadarajan as an assistant managing editor, effective in mid February.

Tunku will work closely with me, Dan Hertzberg, Mike Miller and Edward Felsenthal, among others, on finding ways to broaden the range of our feature coverage throughout the paper. I’m making this move at a time when our features and news features are riding high, from the centerpiece on Saturdays back through all the section fronts six days a week. Having the fresh eye of someone with Tunku’s record of success – most recently in broadening out and invigorating the edit page’s op-ed features – will help us keep ahead of the competition at a time when other publications, both new and old, are seeking to steal our approach.

Tunku brings superb qualifications to this new role. He joined the Journal in 2000 in New York as a senior editorial page writer. Later that year he became deputy editorial features editor and a columnist for OpinionJournal.com. In 2002 he became chief television and media critic, and was named editorial features editor, his current post, later that same year.

Born in India and a British citizen, Tunku holds a law degree from Oxford and was the Levine Memorial lecturer in law there from 1988 to 1993. After that he joined the Times of London, first as an editorial writer in London, then as bureau chief in Madrid and New York. He was a free lance writer in New York from 1998 to 2000, contributing regularly to the Leisure & Arts and edit feature columns.

Please join me in welcoming Tunku to the News department and wishing him every success in his new role.

Best regards,
Paul Steiger

Posted by Sree Sreenivasan at 05:10 PM in Journalists In The News, Members | Permalink